Eyes of a Broken Soul
by c-cruxe
Summary: Harry hides from the truth but his eyes say all that his mouth doesn't.
1. One

_One_

Five year old Harry has big, naïve green eyes. They're beautiful, bulbous things, unfocused and vacant because Harry can't really see. His Aunt doesn't like to look at him, doesn't like his eyes, but Uncle Vernon's threatened to gouge them out with a pencil a few too many times when those almost unseeing eyes look in the wrong direction. Harry doesn't know why and he's too scared of them all to ask.

When Harry's lonely – which is quite often; his Uncle likes to put him in the cupboard (_out of sight, out of mind_) – his eyes tear up slightly and he looks around the small space in his 'room', seemingly larger because of his small size, and the darkness presses into him from all sides. He doesn't like it in the cupboard but school isn't much better. Dudley and his friends like to pick on Harry, punch him and it's not unusual to see one of his pretty eyes surrounded by an ugly, dark circle of bruises. Those eyes don't change when the pain comes; it's all he really knows in this life. Pain is real and Harry will take what he can get because he's a bad, _bad_ freak. What does a freak like him deserve, if not pain?

Sometimes, after Uncle Vernon and Dudley have finished beating him and he's left, lying broken and bruised in the desolate darkness, he wonders of what life might've been like if his parents were still alive. Would they love him? Would they even _like_ him? He doesn't think so. A freak like him didn't deserve their positive emotions. He deserves the welts across his back, bleeding and maybe infected and painful. Each time he thinks this, his innocence shatters a little more and his eyes, like shiny mirrors, fracture ever so slightly as the soul inside him breaks that little bit more.


	2. Two

_Two_

Eleven year old Harry has dark, jaded eyes. They're still beautifully green, hidden behind thick, ugly wire rimmed glasses that give him crystal clarity of the world around him. Behind the chunky glass, his weary eyes look at the world and he wonders, somewhat dazedly, if he is dead. Before, he had only known disdain and anger and pain, all given to him abundantly from his relatives and the transition in to this new, magical – quite literally – world is a shock. Here, there is no pain. At least, there hasn't been yet. There is disdain from several but that is all forgotten in sheer awe of the admiration aimed at him. Surely, _surely_, he is dead for such a world cannot exist.

He is a freak, unworthy of the attention aimed at him. He shies away from it because it will hurt less if he ever wakes up. If he is not dead, then this is a dream and Harry hates that he lets himself hope like this, even subconsciously. When he wakes – if he does – he will provoke Uncle Vernon into beating him. He cannot let himself hope, it is merely meaningless solace and he does not want it. He does not deserve happiness. He is a freak and freaks do not deserve _anything_.

Ron sits by him on the train and Harry gets to look at what it might be like to be normal. Ron is all smiles and laughs and naivety. When Harry is with Ron, his sense of worth drops a little more and the difference between them is striking. Ron doesn't notice. Maybe he can't see… but Harry sees and no matter what he does, he will never be like Ron. He wants to be but freaks don't ever get what they want.

The hat puts him in Gryffindor and no one notices that Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, isn't like the rest of the first years.


	3. Three

_Three _

Fifteen year old Harry has cold, empty eyes. They're not the same green they used to be; they're darker now, somewhere between black and green but nonetheless beautiful. What used to be full of emotion, though sad, are now empty. Harry has seen death and when the Reaper came, he took more than Cedric's soul. Cedric's death tore the last shred of innocence he had and what had been left behind was an empty, broken boy. A freak.

And there are those that care, those that offer tentative words and comforting embraces but Harry, the Boy-Who-Lived-To-Become-A-Freak, can't accept them. He hides inside himself, lost in words that come from the past, when it was simply hate and pain and loneliness. Too many care for him these days but they cannot understand what it is like to be completely broken and empty. Harry knows what the world is like, for he has seen the very worst of it, and it is not pretty place. The world has broken him and he can no longer fake smiles or choke out forced laughter. Happiness and friendship are just ways to hide the horror underneath, he now understands and with that comes acceptance; after all, he was not expecting anything less.

Love… love can bring more pain that a dozen _Crucio_s. So when Hermione reaches up to kiss his cheek, he flinches away and moves towards the Dursleys because they've never tried to love him and he doesn't want to believe that there is something better than what he knows. What he does know is death is just around the corner, waiting for the end and he can feel it, wherever he is and he wants to know how the others don't feel it. It is so strong, a bitter taste that is near tangible in the air and the aftermath, the aftertaste, is so much worse. Harry knows Sirius can feel it too but the man is all smiles and jokes - he wants to hide the truth under positive emotions.

He should know by now that it doesn't work.


	4. Four

_Four_

Seventeen year old Harry has vindictive, victorious eyes. The green is so dark that it may as well be black and they're not quite as beautiful as they once were. The glasses are gone – a weakness in the battle field and so cured by an ancient spell from the Hogwarts Library. He laughs as he throws the ugly glasses away and that is perhaps the most emotion he has shown in a year. In the end, though, he is screaming and nothing seems as funny as it had before. The Dursleys are dead and he is laughing, ridding himself of the only thing they had ever bought for him and maybe it is his own way of saying goodbye.

What a bad, bad freak he is. Only now, he enjoys the bad and he unleashes it, killing and destroying and burning but winning. Voldemort becomes a pile of ash under a wave of burning hot viridian fire. They find Harry laughing as the blue fire burns areas around him and, finally, he has found something to fill the emptiness with.

His broken soul, marred by the death of many and enough blood to fill a river on his hands, is soothed by the enigmatic darkness that reaches into his very being and makes him feel _something_. Seeing someone beneath him, under his mercy, whether it is in the bedroom or on the battle field, gives him a thrill like no other and he needs to feel that otherwise there is nothing to live for.

Even freaks need a reason to live.

* * *

><p>"I can't believe you, Harry Potter!" Hermione screeches, flinging herself onto the bench opposite him. The area around them quietens – everyone is dying for gossip about the Golden Trio – and Harry looks up from his breakfast, eyes blank, face unshaven and food barely touched.<p>

"What?" He bites out, annoyed at her for the commotions she is causing. Anger rises in him and he longs to lash out but controls it roughly, pushing the emotions into the darkness of his mind. The darkness is soothing, lulling him into a sense of just _being_ and Hermione is still speaking, yelling really.

Her hair is frazzled, more frizzy than usual, sticking up at the back. Harry thinks it's a poor imitation of his own unruly hair. "- You and Susan? In a broom closet, nonetheless! What about Ginny? You love her, right? And now I hear about you snogging Susan Bones in a closet. Honestly, Harry! You should be more respon-"

He cuts her off. "Love?" He chuckles. "Love is for fools who don't know how cruel the world is."

Ginny hears, sat near him, and she runs off, crying because a fling in his sixth year is supposed to mean they're in love forever.

Harry thinks it's about time she realises how the world really is.


	5. Five

_Five_

Twenty year old Harry has knowing, steely eyes. Fully black now, and full of a swirling darkness that is somewhat reminiscent of the void inside him. He's a legend, a hero, the fucking Man-Who-Conquered. He won! And he has a new woman in his bed every night to celebrate it. Sometimes in the day too, when he's not training to become an Auror, which honestly isn't often. No rest for the wicked and what is Harry, if not a wicked freak?

He laughs at the notion of being anything else. Even now, years after the Dursleys' deaths and his time at their perfect house, he is still the freak under the stairs inside, using the darkness and sex to block out those thoughts because the freak doesn't want to face the truth (_that he is _nothing_ – such a bad child - and he shouldn't be allowed to live_). When that's not enough, he uses alcohol and he forgets and everything seems to be okay for a few hours. Harry supposes he's content. The world is no longer being destroyed by his viridian fire, no longer under the threat of Voldemort and that is good. Really good. But Harry will never be _happy_.

After all, isn't happiness just a cover for the lies and death underneath the surface, starkly there for those who look beyond the façade of normalcy? Death still hangs in the air, bitter as ever, and it's all Harry can do to ignore it. It'll never go away, not until death claims him too and he can live with that. It's not like there's a choice. Sometimes, in his peripheral vision, there is a shadow and long, skeletal fingers reach out towards him and Harry knows death is impatient and so he clings to life with all that he can because he lives to be defiant, to be a bad freak. If only the Dursleys could see him now…

_Bad, bad freak… useless waste of space… should've died… I'll kill you!... you're nothing, Harry, you'll never be better than him… how can you live with yourself?... soulless… death isn't enough… _

Memories of the past are always there, constantly telling him the truth and he can only block it out for so long.

He'll just have to learn that nothing can hide the truth.

And the truth is that he's broken, his soul is broken and there's nothing he can do about it. And his eyes say it all…

The eyes of a broken soul.

* * *

><p><em>A not so good ending, but the best I could think of. Did you like it? Hate it? Is Harry too OOC or does the background I've made justify the difference? After all, cannon Harry wasn't physically abused - starved, verbally abused but Vernon never seriously hurt Harry, though Dudley is said to have beaten Harry up with his friends - and managed to finish the battle as a respectable person but I'm thinking 'what if?' here. <em>

_Reviews are appreciated and thanks for reading, _

_Darkedreams. _

_P.S I just got back from seeing Deathly Hallows Part 2! It's amazing... though not completely like the books... if you've seen it, did you think it was good? _


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